PSP confirms investigation into cheating allegations at academy

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HARRISBURG - An investigation into allegations of cheating at the State Police academy is still turning heads, now that the PSP has acknowledged that such an investigation is taking place.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, State Police Commissioner Tyree Blocker admitted the investigation has been ongoing since December 2015, that dozens of interviews have taken place and a large amount of evidence has been collected.

"As the leader of this agency, I assure the people of Pennsylvania that we will leave no stone unturned and those who engaged in such behavior face swift and certain discipline," Blocker said.

“You're gathering evidence, you're interviewing people, you're cross checking those interviews with what people have said in the other interviews, you're following up on the leads that are generated from those interviews, so there's a lot of work that has to be done,” Stephen Wheeler, a law enforcement consultant for SRW Strategies, said.

In total, Wheeler spent more than 30 years in Pennsylvania law enforcement, and he took FOX43 through what would normally take place in a state police investigation and also what steps would be necessary to make sure something like this never happens again.

“Any law enforcement executive would, after something like this happened in their agency, go back and sit down and say alright, what did we learn from this and how can we make sure that this doesn't happen in the future,” he said.

Wheeler says there's plenty at stake for the Pennsylvania State Police in this investigation, saying it has to satisfy the public as well as state lawmakers that it has a handle on things.

“When you say the words Pennsylvania State Police, they mean something to the public,” he said. “The public has an image of what that agency is. That's something that you value and you have to protect.”